


Upon a Fiery Steed

by Jennypen



Series: Someone Reaching Back for Me [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, i really need to stop committing to things, originally for the shance big bang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-04-20 04:40:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14253219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennypen/pseuds/Jennypen
Summary: They averted a terrorist attack, and Shiro worked up the nerve to start dating Lance. Everything should have been plain sailing after that, right?Except Shiro is sure something's not right with Lance...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey. So. This was a long time coming, and should have been completed for the Shance Big Bang but life happened to me and my two artists so this never got completed and posted. It is now.  
> Short little chapters for organisational sake.

“Huh?”

Shiro looked in Lance’s direction, to find him blinking at Shiro’s reflection in the mirror. “What was that?” I missed what you said.”

“I’ve been talking for five minutes straight. How much did you miss and why on earth did you stop paying attention?”

“I can’t help it if my own beauty distracts me!” Lance laughed, a little less easy than Shiro was used to, but his eyes were smiling in the mirror. “I got distracted by my eyebrows - I don’t have time to pluck them so I’m just shaping them with highlighter and hoping for the best.”

“Right, okay. No problem. You know,” Shiro sighed, coming up to wrap his arms around Lance’s waist, letting his hands settle on his boyfriends’ hips. “You’re going to look perfect, regardless. You really don’t need to worry about it.”

“Shiro.”

Shiro stood up straight at Lance’s tone.

“Yeah?”

“My face is on every newscast piece eleven every time I poke my nose out in public. I gotta look perfect, or I have to deal with seeing a crappy picture of myself on Nightline for a week. It’s easier to make the effort than deal with the consequences.” As he finished, he lifted the small highlighter brush to his face, dotting it under his brow to mask the few errant growing hairs that Shiro could only see up close.

“As long as you’re happy,” he breathed in Lance’s ear, grinning at his rewarded shiver that ran through Lance.

“You are going to make me late. And horny. And if you get me horny enough, even later. Welcome ceremony starts in ten and I’m not being late - otherwise it’s ‘that kid doesn’t deserve that golden ride, can’t have a cripple for a teacher, can’t waste money trying to give cripples a chance when there are able-bodied men who don’t waste taxpayer money on their medical treatment, and-“

“Sssssh,” Shiro soothed, interrupting Lance’s tirade. “No-one thinks you are anything except deserving of this. Your leg was the largest ever single-person crowdfund for goodness sake - you don’t need to put yourself under so much pressure.”

Lance sighed, and Shiro felt his boyfriend physically _force_ himself to relax.

“You’re right,” Lance agreed at length. “You’re right. I just - I feel like I have to be better that perfect, or it’ll be taken away from me.”

“No,” Shiro gently chided, “It won’t - I promise you that. This is you. You’re meant for great things, Lance. You’ve done them already and that’s how you got here. You earned this.”

Lance ducked his head, and Shiro held him all the more tightly. He trembled, and for a moment Shiro regretted his words, until he lifted his head to meet Shiro’s reflection. He wore a wan smile.

“…Thanks, Takashi. You are too, y’know,” he whispered. Shiro turned them both so they were facing, and he smiled in answer.

“Meant for greatness, I’m telling you.” He gave Lance’s lips a quick peck, then pulled away. “Ceremony in seven and it’s a four minute walk. Hurry!”

“You go on ahead, get your seat. I’ll catch you up after, okay?”

“You got it,” Shiro acknowledged, dropping his gaze as he walked to admire Lance’s pert bottom bent over the sink. He chuckled softly to himself, grabbing his dress cap with its newly-affixed second pip, and walked out the door of Lance’s quarters with a new spring in his step.

 _I love you_. Unspoken, the words came unbidden to his mind often now. Though he’d not had the courage to say them, he knew Lance understood the strength of his feelings. In time, he’d surely find the courage - but first, there was the small matter of the welcoming ceremony, where Lance (along with several others) was to be officially sworn in as a flight instructor. After, perhaps, buoyant with celebratory fizz and classic dutch courage, Shiro would abandon that one tiny niggling worry that his first fall was only infatuation and tell the love of his life exactly how he felt - that every moment with Lance was a blessing, and Shiro never wanted a life without being by Lance’s side.

 _After_ , he told himself. He would do it. Lance deserved it.


	2. Chapter 2

Each of the graduated cadets strode onstage with a sense of purpose and honour, taking a seat in a laid-out line of chairs, leaving the last one empty for what could only be theatrical.

It seemed Lance brought out the sublime and ridiculous in everyone.

Anticipation was one thing, but hearing Lance’s name was an entirely different feeling. Shiro’s heart was almost beating out of his chest with pride as the gathered families of cadets and staff, as well as the small smattering of permitted media (just as Lance had expected), rose and began to clap. From where he was stood, Shiro could see Lance’s mother in the civilian section, clapping harder than anyone else present. Their eyes met and she beamed at him, both of them seemingly on the same page when it came to happiness today. The marching band stirred, a rousing brassy piece, muffled under the accompanying cheer from the crowd. Shiro smirked to himself that Lance had probably been right about his eyebrows, but as the applause began to dwindle, he frowned and stared expectantly at the corner of the stage where he knew the stairs lay.

No movement.

The moment dragged out long enough that a small murmur broke out among those in the crowd, and Shiro felt he straight, disciplined lines of cadets falter somewhat and shift on the spot as a whole minute went by with no sign of Lance - an entire age, it felt like.

“Is Hotshot going for a fashionably late entrance?” Shiro heard from a row behind him, sound carried purely by the sarcasm fuelling it.

“Sssh!” answered another voice, and when he let himself look back, he locked eyes with a girl in his year, one of the few who was aware of his and Lance’s relationship. She winced somewhat apologetically, before flicking her gaze back to the stage.

Shiro frowned in response, and gave a quick shrug, worry finally curling a cold finger around his heart before he saw her expression brighten immensely. When he turned back, he was immediately relieved to see Lance’s brown head bobbing onto the stage, loping gait bounding to make up for lost time. His expression was sheepish, but the upsurge in applause covered his lateness.

“Now, young man, we won’t be so patient if you’re late to class - might have to dock those wages!” Iverson boomed, but there was joviality there, something which Shiro felt stunned his fellow cadets who were used to the man’s furious admonitions, but was no surprise to Shiro at all - after the incident, Iverson had used his considerable presence to strongarm his way to visit Lance often while he was in recovery. Brusque though he may have been, it had only taken one coincidental visit for Shiro to learn just how Iverson conducted himself according to his own private sense of right and wrong, and his learned fear of the man was replaced very rapidly with a sympathetic respect. On the stage, Shiro saw a gleam cross Lance’s eyes, widening his grin to full beams.

“Sorry, sir. You know, a funny thing happened on my way down here…” A resounding groan tore through the grounds and just like that, the brief weirdness of Lance’s wait was forgotten as Iverson pinned instructors’ stripes onto first Lance, then the rest of the line of fresh, shiny instructors, each as excited as Lance. The cheer after Lance’s was the loudest, though, and of course Lance managed to find Shiro’s face in the crowd to throw them a sly wink.

A rush of heat, uncontrollable, ran through Shiro at that, and he realised that there was no-one else, could never be anyone else who could so easily light a fire inside him as Lance.

Definitely tonight, Shiro mused to himself. _I’ll tell him tonight_.


	3. Chapter 3

Sadly, that evening they discovered that the staff not only had a very lively social life, but new staff were almost forcefully inducted into it (not that it ever took much persuasion to convince Lance to enjoy himself, but it seemed he’d been as eager to see Shiro as Shiro was to him. Lance had thrown Shiro a secret, apologetic glance as he was dragged off by the elbow by some of the older members of staff to what Shiro would later learn was an undisclosed alcohol stash in the instructor’s lounge. Lance drunk-called Shiro at 2am and rambled for eleven minutes about how utterly blessed he was that he had a boyfriend like Shiro - Shiro had listened to all of it with a sense of fond amusement, and managed to refrain from laughing the next morning when Lance had texted him from the floor in his bathroom, clearly struggling with the downside to the previous night’s revelry.

It was getting harder _not_ to just say it as the days went by, but it was the first time Shiro had ever had a soul that wasn’t his parents that he loved them, and, godammit, he wanted to be a romantic fuck about it.

He could wait. He’d get his chance.

* * *

The academic year commenced with a flurry, and over the next week Shiro spent several days without sight of his boyfriend. Caught up in his classes, he was restricted texts from Lance (including a few really, _really_ lewd pictures of Lance in his new uniform, igniting something in Shiro that he did not previously know he was weak for). Shiro himself was swamped with work, as seemed to be the tradition at the Garrison - though Lance tried to tell him it was self-inflicted because he liked to start on an assigned work immediately, rather than wait like everyone else until two days before it was due, because the deadlines were staggered for that exact reason.

Shiro’s response had been that he’d rather work on it while Lance was swamped in work, and be available when Lance was, too; a logical leap Lance could not find fault with. One of the biggest burning questions Shiro had was what one of Lance’s classes was like—he was only teaching the new integrated Intro to Spaceflight course, brand new for the incoming freshman intake as part of the newly overhauled non-streamed flight curriculum. Given that Lance had been taught the cargo curriculum, but had quietly gone and learned the fighter material on his own, the Garrison Board of Education decided there was no-one more fitting to introduce new students to a combined course but the Garrison’s resident poster boy, especially given he was the reason the course was being overhauled in the first place.

Shiro found his question being answered in an unorthodox—and accidental—manner later in the week. He was in the bathroom between lectures when he heard the door open, and the footfalls that corresponded to several students entering together.

“Okay, that was _awesome_. I thought all the hype would be a bunch of bullshit but oh my god, that was the real deal.”

“Right?!”

Yeah! Looks like Hotshot’s all he’s cracked up to be.”

“Dude, you’re not supposed to call him that, he’s Instructor-“

“Whatever, everyone and their mom calls him Hotshot. Especially my mama. She’s got his poster on the inside of her closet. Worst part is my dad bought it for her.”

“Yeah, mine too.”

Shiro, by now, was struggling to contain himself—torn between bursting with pride and laughing out loud, he lost control and let out a strangled snort. The voices faltered, briefly, before resuming.

“That part at the start was weird, though.”

“Right?!”

“What even was that?”

“I don’t know. He was just, like, standing there, staring into space. I thought he was just daydreaming for a second. What about you guys?”

“Right?!”

“Anderson, you ever express an opinion of your own?”

“…Sometimes.” Sheepish. The urge to laugh rose again. At this stage his still being in a cubicle gave off a vibe he wasn’t sure he comfortable with, but he didn’t want to miss a moment of this rather special conversation.

“Yeah. When you do, lemme know ‘cos it’s one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

“Guffaws of laughter followed that, and then—somewhat surprisingly—the sound of several taps being turned on at once, a nod to hygiene Shiro had been convinced barely existed at the Garrison. He’d always found the contrast between his somewhat gross classmates and his fastidiously clean boyfriend to be head-turning, but if they were beginning to finally mature to the stage of hand-washing after a piss then perhaps there was hope yet.

After they had left and Shiro was left alone once more, he sighed and chuckled away the tension as he did, shaking his head. It sounded like Lance had made quite an impression on the other cadets—something Shiro had always had faith in but it was gratifying to hear from the horse’s mouths, so to speak. They’d sounded genuinely excited—though, he thought, smile fading a touch, there was that one strange moment that was enough for the cadets to have mentioned it—frowning, Shiro had the prickling feeling of slow, creeping realisation, the slightest chink of light cutting through the fog of his elsewhere thoughts. It reminded him of the morning of the ceremony, Lance blinking away a momentary distraction that, now Shiro gave it some thought, was most unlike his usually bright, attentively observant lover. Shiro had never seen Lance anything but cheerful—he’d grinned his way through being shot, for heaven’s sake. Then again, Lance had a preternaturally enormous workload just now, as well as the added pressure of the whole world watching and a desperate need to prove himself, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that Lance would be a little preoccupied.

Still, it happening in class felt… just weird. Maybe Shiro would bring it up with Lance later, whenever ‘later’ was.

His pocket vibrated as he washed his hands (perhaps taking a little longer than usual, funny how peer pressure works) and when he pulled it out to check, his worries were shelved as his heart lifted to see what was rapidly becoming his favourite six words in the entire English language:

 

_Lance_ ❤️ _has sent you an image._

 

The blush served to rob him of his forming concerns as all of his blood left his brain at once and rushed south, momentarily depriving him of his processing capability as his imagination, seemingly intrinsically linked to his cock, went into fervent overdrive to comprehend the caption underneath.

 

_‘It’s nowhere near as big as you, but it’ll keep me ready until you get here. Hurry, Shiro~’_

 

Somehow, Shiro managed to keep his wits about him enough to hobble, then eventually walk as casually swiftly as he could get away with, eventually breaking out into a run as soon as he hit a back corridor ignored by most of the campus, but which, conveniently, led right to Lance’s room. He slowed his pace outside the door and ran a hand through his hair, catching his breath.

Sometimes, Lance had better ideas. His work could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am really thrilled by the kind feedback and responses I've gotten from people - thank you to everyone for cheering me up!


	4. Chapter 4

The shrill screech of the alarm cut right through the delightfully warm dream Shiro had been having, full-force yanking him into the barest level of awareness. Lance’s alarm could wake the dead, which was good, because Lance slept deeper than any member of the living. This was, Shiro had long decided, the single downside to dating the man.

“Lance, ‘larm,” he mumbled, mostly into his pillow, chasing his dream with pointless hope. It was fading fast, but it had been sexy enough to carry over into reality, meaning his consciousness sought sleep but his body searched for friction to spur his arousal along. It spoke volumes about his mental faculties while semi-conscious that he was trying to redeem the fantasy, rather than rolling over and making use of what was far more than morning wood with his always-willing lover.

“Lance, ‘larm,” he repeated, lifting his head from the pillow and giving the slightest incline of his head to point the sound in Lance’s vague direction. He stretched a leg behind him, meeting Lance’s comforting warmth, and gave him a gentle shove. “Wake up, Lance, your alarm is the worst, oh my god.”

It took a few seconds for the now-piercing shriek of Lance’s alarm system to finally drag Shiro into wakefulness, though he fought every step of the way. Annoyed by now, he shuffled about in the covers, giving Lance’s leg a more solid kick in the process as he made a show of attempting to turn towards Lance.

“Lance, what the hell…” he trailed off as his now-awake brain registered several things at once.

Firstly, Lance’s leg was tense as a bowstring, muscles fully taut. It had not moved even with Shiro’s kicks.

Secondly, Lance _always_ woke up before Shiro, to the point that they had a standing agreement that if Shiro had morning wood, Lance had express permission to wake him up with his mouth around Shiro’s cock. As such, the only time Shiro had ever even heard Lance's alarm before had been as a very brief, faroff audio precursor to the heat of Lance's mouth.

At that, some sense overrode Shiro’s false indignation and he sat up straight in the bed, finally laying eyes on Lance. He froze, jaw dropping wide open as his now fully-alert mind took in Lance’s form, rigid, arms by his side, hand balled into white-knuckled fists and eyes wide and staring. He was breathing raggedly, expression one of shock, and perhaps fear. No, stronger than that - it was _terror_. A thin sheen of sweat covered every inch of visible skin.

“Lance?!” Shiro blurted, leaning in close to look better at Lance, his own panic starting to rise, when Lance blinked and made a strangled gasp, then drew a deep, full breath. “Lance! Oh god, Lance, are you okay?”

Lance gave a little shake of his head, as though he was trying to clear a stray thought away, and looked up at Shiro.

“I feel like I should be asking you that question,” he said with obvious effort, both to get the words out and to sound casual while doing so. “Are you alright? You look like I just shot Bambi’s mom.” Shior did not laugh, and Lance’s face fell. “Or am I Bambi’s mom?”

“God, Lance,” Shiro said, leaning forward to wrap his arms around a confused Lance. “You scared the shit out of me. You were just _lying there_ , it was really weird.”

“Lying in a bed is weird?” Lance asked carefully, as though dealing with an escaped victim of head trauma. Shiro pulled back, fixing him with a stare that made Lance flinch.

“Don’t be an ass, I wasn’t kidding. You were just lying there, and you were stiff as a board.”

“Pillow princesses not your kink, huh?” Lance joked, and Shiro started to lose his patience.

“Christ, Lance, no, you fucking scared me half to death!” He felt his control start to slip, felt his emotions take a shift towards frustration and even anger at Lance’s flippant denial and attempt to ignore the issue. “Why won’t you listen to me? Something was really, really wrong and you’re making fun of it and laughing at my fear. You’re being a complete asshole, you know that?”

Lance sat up short, shame immediately evident. He broke eye contact with Shiro and looked off to the side, sighing as he did. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to make fun of your fear—I thought showing you I was fine would stop it and make you feel better.”

Well, that made a strange sort of sense. Wind thoroughly removed from his sails, Shiro’s anger dissipated as he clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. Lance saw the motion and put a hand over Shiro’s own, apologetic in his touch.

“It felt like you were saying I was wrong and dumb.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t saying you had no reason to be worried, just that whatver it was is done. Anyway, I think it was just a really lucid dream, so it’s probably no big deal, okay?”

Shiro let out a breath. He looked at Lance, smiling ruefully, and the frightening image of him laying there began to fade, some of the details failing to make the journey from short-term to long-term memory, overwritten by the vibrant creature before him. Now that Lance was okay, being worried seemed more and more unnecessary and even absurd.

Shiro nodded once, acquiescent. The kiss was inevitable after that, Lance clearly seeking to move past the moment. Shiro met him hungrily, lips parting to deepen it as much as he could, pouring all his worry into attempting to close the gap between them. He felt rather than heard Lance’s groan and he responded to that, tongue darting out to meet Lance’s own in a manner all-too-familiar but somehow, a new sensation each time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, no big smut - this is plot-based and I didn't want to drop the pace for a gratuitous long fuck scene. There is a little bit at the beginning of the next chapter, though :P


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOPS accidentally reposted chapter 4 as 5 like a moron!

Too much, God, it was always too much, and all Shiro wanted to do was to let go of his control and fuck as fast as he could but he was so eager to see Lance fall apart that he put aside that urge and focused instead on Lance—changing his strokes to push deeper, slower and more measured. He saw an immediate corresponding change in Lance—Lance’s breathing stuttered as Shiro fucked him exactly the way he loved most. His breaths became shallower, more ragged as he started to fall to pieces, and all Shiro wanted to hear was—

“I’m coming, I’m gonna come, Shiro~!”

At that, Shiro picked up speed again, hips pistoning as hard as he possibly could, every force in him chasing completion. He felt Lance tighten, felt him clench around him, a low scream buried in his chest as Lance came between them and Shiro couldn’t help but laugh with joy as he was picked up and dragged over the into orgasm.

It crashed into him at once, a surging high that had him panting Lance’s name in a broken plea. It seemed to go on forever, Lance’s body still hard and wringing every last drop of pleasure from Shiro. He stilled, catching his breath, the stimulation becoming overly sensitive and lifted his head to start the process of gently unlocking them.

His heart stopped as something cold stabbed him in the belly.

Lance was lying ramrod-straight, eyes open and sightless, staring at the ceiling. His eyes rolled backwards in his head. Every muscle he had was tensed, his teeth grinding in his jaw and there was blood smeared on his lips from having bitten them.

It was happening again.

“Lance! Oh god, no, no, no, no,” Shiro cried as he tried desperately to pull himself out of the grip of Lance’s body. “Lance, please don’t do this, please…” Finally, he managed to extract himself and he didn’t even bother with the condom, too focused on Lance.

Contrary to his begging, Lance started to shudder - limbs at first, then his head tilted until he was fully in the throes of seizure. The bed knocked against the wall with the force of his shaking, and Shiro’s panic bubbled up until he could no longer think clearly.

“Lance, please,” he begged. “Please stop, come back to me, please, baby.” Somehow, he retained the presence of mind to actually manage to turn Lance onto his side so Lance wouldn’t choke. Seconds ticked by like years as Lance shuddered and shook—Shiro had no idea how much time had passed, only long enough for him to have just grabbed his phone when all at once, Lance went limp underneath him.

“Lance!” Shiro called, putting an ear to his lover’s thin chest. He could clearly hear Lance’s heartbeat pounding against his ear, along with the steadying rise and fall of Lance’s chest. He pulled back to find Lance’s eyes fluttering open, shining blue eyes showing the first ounce of terror Shiro had ever seen in Lance. He breathed in, and Shiro waited.

“…So,” he said quietly, clearly fully aware of what had happened, or at least having pieced it together.

“So,” Shiro responded.

“I’m guessing that wasn’t pretty.”

“Seizures generally aren’t,” Shiro agreed, not quite able to keep the snippiness out of his voice, regretting it almost instantly as Lance broke eye contact and stared at his fiddling fingers. “Hey,” he went on, putting a hand on Lance’s chin and gently moving his face upwards, somewhat alarmed anew by how cold Lance’s pale skin was. “Sorry. I—was really scared.”

“I’m the one that should be sorry,” Lance answered. “You were right, there’s something wrong with me,” he admitted.

He paused for a brief moment and Shiro almost prompted him onwards, but then he saw Lance’s shoulders shift.

“I’ve been having these really… vivid dreams,” he said in a very nervous tone. “I’m… it keeps happening. I thought it was just a phase but then I started blacking out during the way, and I don’t always know how much time I even lost. Sometimes it’s just a few seconds, but just before the opening ceremony it was like a good few minutes because when I came to I was already late and had to run the rest of the way to the stage.”

_Oh._

Shiro kicked himself internally for not realising that event was linked to all of this.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked, as calmly as he could. If possible, Lance’s head ducked even further down.

“The first time was while I was in the helicopter on the way to the trauma hospital, just after they put me into the medically-induced coma.”

Shiro blew out a breath. That was _months_ ago. All this time and he’d known nothing? The entire course of their relationship, and Lance had been suffering these events and Shiro had never noticed.

“At first, I just thought it was the coma, then I had the dream again a few weeks later. Woke up in a cold sweat. Asked Julianne about it, but she said it was probably stress or trauma.”

Julianne was his school-mandated counsellor. Once a lone operative, she now commanded a team of people to cope with the increasing demands after the Garrison’s largest-scale designated Serious Incident.

“I didn’t think people had dreams in comas,” Shiro mumbled, not wanting to stall Lance’s flow, now that he was talking.

“Yeah, I found that out later. I thought it was just a recurring dream until it happened during the day. When I was talking to you the other day and I zoned out, do you remember?”

Of course Shiro remembered - so unlike Lance to miss even a single beat of Shiro’s conversation, it had stuck in Shiro’s mind. He nodded.

“Yeah. And then on the way to the opening ceremony—I was standing at the stage door and waiting, and next thing one of the admins is tapping me on the shoulder and asking me if I’m okay, that they called my name and everyone’s waiting so I had to run out there.”

Shiro marvelled. Lance had jogged on stage and comfortably made a perfectly-gauged joke that glossed over his own tardiness, all the while scared shitless over what on earth was happening. Shiro felt a wave of love for his boyfriend, even though he wanted to thoroughly shake him senseless for not sharing his worries earlier, before it got to this point. He was sure the image of Lance, the _feel_ of him seizing under Shiro, was going to be difficult to escape from for a while, at least.

That reminded him. He sat up and hobbled over to the washbowl set in the wall, and tugged the condom off the rest of the way, popping it in the waste receptacle under the sink. He washed his hands, grabbing a soft wipe out of the packet and adding a little extra water to it. He cleaned himself down, then grabbed another few wipes and attended to Lance, disposing of the wipes in the trash with a well-aimed toss. Reseated next to Lance, he reached out to thread his fingers in Lance’s own and held his lover’s trembling hand.

“What about in class yesterday?”

Lance tensed and snapped his eyes to Shiro, guilt painted all over his face.

“You knew about that?”

“Overheard a few freshmen talking about it in the head yesterday. They said they really liked your class, by the way.”

“They did?” Lance looked inordinately pleased at that.

“Of course.” He squeezed Lance’s hand. “I never doubted that.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, “You didn’t. Half—no, most of the reason I didn’t run for the hills on the first day. That, and my mom would’ve murdered me.”

“I mean, she’d probably have just broken your legs, right?”

“Nah, she doesn’t half-ass anything. Dead, body fed to piranhas.”

“Are there piranhas in Cuba?!”

“She’d have found some, don’t worry.”

Shiro snorted. In truth, Lance’s mother was one of his favourite people ever—he’d visited her alongside Lance when Lance had been on one of his mandated recuperation weeks, and Shiro had bribed one of the cadets who’d been assigned to chaperone in order to take their place. It had been the first time anyone in Lance’s family had seen him walking since he’d first gotten his prosthetic, but Lance’s mother’s first words were to scold Lance for not telling her he was bringing his boyfriend, stunning Shiro, who’d been fully prepared to pretend they weren’t anything to each other. This telling off was promptly followed by an appraising look that saw through to Shiro’s very soul, and then—

 _Well, he’s an awful lot better looking than Mariam,”_ she’d said, and then he’d been drawn into an enormous hug.

He never did get around to asking Lance who Mariam was.

“Definitely. And made them a snack to take home after. She’s good like that.”

“I like your commitment to this scenario but you’re forgetting the piranhas will have already eaten me.”

“Are you trying to say someone being full would be enough to stop your mom trying to feed them?”

“…Dammit, you know my mama better than I do. I’ll never get rid of you now.” He looked up from behind hooded eyelids and Shiro realised with a sharp, clarion bell call that Lance was asking something entirely different.

“Never,” he answered, and watched with joy as Lance’s face creased in a true smile.

“I… was scared you’d think I was crazy,” he confessed, shyly hesitant. “Still kinda am.”

“Do you trust me?” Shiro asked, loudly.

“Alright, Aladdin, calm down. Yes, Of course I do.”

“Then trust me that I’ll believe you.”

He saw Lance accept that as truth, even though it was one he’d long known, and nod, slowly, shaking a little but this time it was a good kind—relief and growing joy evident in every inch of him.

“I do,” Lance whispered, earnest and quiet, the words carefully chosen to affirm the intent in his complaint about Shiro being a limpet, and Shiro leaned forward to break the moment and seal their new promise with a rather chaste kiss, given the circumstances, but one which conveyed, in its brevity, every scrap of emotion either felt.

“God, I love you,” Lance sighed as Shiro pulled back, eyes closed still and face beyond beautiful. Shiro felt his own face split into a giant grin, and he placed one sweet kiss on his boyfriend’s lips.

“I love you too,” he said, kicking himself for how easy it was to say, and having waited for this long to say it. Trust Lance to be the brave one, again.

“So… this dream,” Lance said, bringing them back down to Earth from where Shiro was sure they’d been flying. He listened intently, silently urging Lance onward. “It’s… really weird. Like, it’s hard to describe but it feels so crazy real, like it’s a true story, which is dumb, because it’s a giant flying alien spaceship in the shape of a blue robot lion.”

“Oh,” Shiro said, more as a way to stall while he digested that. Lance looked crestfallen for a second before he went on, “I wasn’t expecting that collection of words together. Pretty cool, though. I mean, why wouldn’t a giant alien spaceship in the shape of a lion be blue. Go big or go home, y’know?”

“Right?!” Lance said, and Shiro had a bizarre flashback to the bathrooms earlier this week.

“Right. Does, uh, what does the lion do, in your dreams?”

“Flies… a lot…?” Lance answered, uncertain. “Like, in space. And I’m pretty sure she takes down bad guys.”

“She?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, it’s just you said lion.”

“Wow, Shiro, way to be heteronormative over here.”

“You said lion.”

“What? It’s not like I said if there was a mane or not—“

“…As opposed to lioness.”

“…Oh.”

“I mean, it’s also a robot, so I didn’t really think that came into it, but, you know.”

“…Also true.” Lance pulled up short, blinking twice more before cracking a smile. “That’s not just it, though. In my dreams—it’s _me_ flying her.”

 _That_ was unexpected.

“You’re… flying the giant alien robot lion spaceship.”

“Yeah!” Lance breathed, excitement cracking the air between them. “I’m in her cockpit, and my hands are on the controls and all the displays are in an alien language I can’t make head or tail of it, but it’s still easy as breathing. It’s… it feels so real,” he drifted off somewhere between sad and dreamy. “So real. This time, though…”

“This time?” Shiro repeated with a gentle nudge.

“This time—it was different. Usually it’s the same dream, somewhere in space, but this one—it was like I could feel everything I touched, like, I still remember now what it felt like to touch, that vivid. And the dream wasn’t in space, it was here, in the desert. The end of the dream was—ok, no, you’ll laugh at me.” He made to stand up.

“I won’t,” Shiro blurted, shifting to stop Lance up short. “I wouldn’t, not at you. Never at you. Only ever with you.”

Lance stayed every, very still for a moment, as if unsure what to say. The moment stretched out and Shiro started to worry that Lance did not believe him.

“Lance, I—I’ve always looked up to you, you know that. Right from the beginning you were always this amazing guy who could do anything. You saved me and all those people and I wasn’t even surprised; I always believed in you. You are the best person I’ve ever met in my entire life and I am behind you every step of the way, whatever life throws at us, even dangerous space cat dreams. I won’t laugh,” he finished, fiercely and proud of it, “Unless you want me to.”

Lance’s eyes were huge, enormous pupils taking up most of the space, blown wide with shock in the low artificial light. He looked totally shell-shocked, down to the core, and for someone who took what would be a crippling bullet to the leg and still crack jokes, this was almost entirely surprising. It felt inappropriate to think, but, naked and open, he was so, so beautiful.

“I love you,” Shiro blurted, the easiest thing he’d ever said in his life. “You’re—I—“ he floundered, not sure how to follow that up. Weeks of building the courage to say it, but never once did he consider any kind of follow-up. Wordless sounds escaped him as insecurity rapidly paved way to panic.

“I love you too, Takashi,” Lance shushed him, leaning forward to close the distance between them for what was, honestly, truly, the greatest kiss of Shiro’s entire life. He felt his eyes sting with the power of it, the bubbling inside him almost overwhelming, this easily the most laid bare he’d ever felt.

When they broke apart, Shiro kept his hand at Lance’s neck, rubbed his cheek with his thumb and neither of them could have stopped smiling if they tried.

“There are other cats,” Lance said after a moment and Shiro almost laughed, but it was more out of pleasure that Lance told him and he’d promised not to laugh.

“Others?” he encouraged, still holding Lance tight, as if, now that they’d leapt into close quarters, they were unable to move apart.

“Yeah. Four others. And they all join up like the fucking Megazord into a giant robot dude. It was… really, really crazy.”

“Five robot alien cats make a giant robot dude.”

“Yeah.” He felt Lance pause in consideration, then begin to shudder. “Oh god,” he spluttered, laughter bursting out, “The hands are lion heads. It’s—oh God. They can’t even do anything because they’re just mouths. Oh god oh god I’m gonna die. It—Oh god.” He descended into helpless laughter. “Kill me now, this is the stupidest—“

“What if it’s real?” Shiro asked, and Lance faltered in his mirth.

“Huh?”

“What if it’s real? Those dreams—what if it’s a vision?”

Lance stared at him. “Wh-what?”

“A vision,” Shiro persisted. “Maybe this thing is real. Maybe this is the future—whatever tech this thing is made of can manipulate time or something or put a vision in your head. Maybe it’s some… advanced distress beacon that only you can sense.” He was moving quickly from high-end scifi to cheap pulp fiction, spiralling only downward, and he could hear to how ridiculous he sounded, giving him the first inkling of understanding of how ludicrous Lance had felt until now, but then—

“The lion’s asleep somewhere,” Lance interrupted him pulling Shiro up short. Shiro frowned and turned to search him, but Lance’s eyes were clear and determined. Whatever anxiety he’d felt earlier had disappeared—in its place was a Lance who was certain; the Lance Shiro knew lay beneath everything else. “I felt her. She’s waiting. I just don’t know what for.”

“For you to find her.”

When Lance met Shiro’s eyes again, they widened, huge and open. “Oh god, this is huge.”

“It could be,” Shiro agreed, softly. “Do you know where she’s waiting?”

“Nope,” Lance seemed unperturbed by that declaration. “But if she’s real and she wants me to find her, then I’m sure she’ll show me how, right?”

“Makes sense.”

“Or,” Lance said thoughtfully, smile once again creasing across his gorgeous, gorgeous face, “If she’s made of alien stuff, I know just the awesome twosome to track that down.”


End file.
